DEVELOPMENT SHOOT 1 - BOKEH 1

DEVELOPMENT SHOOT 1 - bokeh 1.

SHOOT PLAN:

Material: canon 60d camera

Where: Sandy Water Park (sunny day)

When: mid morning


SHOOT PLAN (second part):

Material: canon 60d camera

Models: a girl

Props: Christmas lights, vintage hat, toy dog, doll, mirror.

Where: living room

When: middle of the afternoon

Aims: The initial plan for this shoot was to try the potentialities of the bokeh technique in the outside, using the reflection of the sun on the water to create the circles of confusion. Due to reasons beyond my control I had to interrupt this shoot in the beginning and couldn’t continue it that week as I didn’t have the appropriated weather, so I decided to plan the rest of the shoot in the house so that I could continue exploring this technique in order to refine it later. For the first part my aim was to play with the more abstract effects that this technique allows, in a natural environment, and explore which sort of atmosphere and visual effects could be created. In the second part I wanted to introduce the human presence and a few objects, linking it in with the idea of introducing either the human presence or hints of it in part of my shoots, as I had concluded during research that this added a very important dimension when working with the idea of memory and dreams. The several props introduced where mainly ways to explore a technique I was not familiar with at all.




RESULTS:

There’s a clear separation between the two different parts of the shoot.

The first one is very directly related to the notion of indistinct, something that can be guessed but is not clear. It continuous the work I started developing during research focusing on details of the nature, as for me details are deeply related to memory and the way memory manifests itself.  These images were made by shooting through the branches of the bushes and trees that surrounded the lake in Sandy water park. I searched the parts of the lake where the sun would be reflected on the water and dispersed by its movement and unfocused the image until I found the circles of confusion. I like how abstract the images turned out. It is still clear that we’re seeing some part of the outside world, but it’s hard to say exactly what in most images. The bokeh effect gives these images a very delicate feeling. They are aesthetically pleasing, as if we are looking at a filigran of light.

The second part of the shoot has more varied results as I was making several experiments regarding the use of bokeh. I did this placing the lights on the window and shooting at the trees outside, using a mirror to create a double image of my model and placing them before the mirror and then shooting through the mirror what was going on by the window.
The Christmas lights were obviously too colourful for the sort of atmosphere I was looking for, but it still gave me a good idea of what could possibly be done. The circles of confusion seem to be a good resource to hide part of a scene and at the same time create a strange, half-surreal atmosphere. This was more of an experimental shoot, but there are two main things I would like to carry forward from it. Firstly I would like to o a refinement shoot exploring more what was done on the first part of this shoot. From the second part of the shoot I would like to try to develop the images done looking through the window (photographing the trees outside) with the light on the foreground, only this time doing it outdoors and using white fairy lights for it.

I find that these more abstract images that result from using bokeh with natural elements could be used in conjunction with the images where we can partially see a human presence to provide a counterpoint for them. Whilst the latter can represent glimpses of memories of dreams that can’t be fully reconstructed, the bokeh ones represent the memory in a more symbolic way.